egory as, the wondrous works associated with
the names of those who have generated its very life and laid its pristine
foundations. That first and creative age of the Baha'i era must, by its
very nature, stand above and apart from the formative period into which we
have entered and the golden age destined to succeed it.

'Abdu'l-Baha, Who incarnates an institution for which we can find no
parallel whatsoever in any of the world's recognized religious systems,
may be said to have closed the Age to which He Himself belonged and opened
the one in which we are now laboring. His Will and Testament should thus
be regarded as the perpetual, the indissoluble link which the mind of Him
Who is the Mystery of God has conceived in order to insure the continuity
of the three ages that constitute the component parts of the Baha'i
Dispensation. The period in which the seed of the Faith had been slowly
germinating is thus intertwined both with the one which must witness its
efflorescence and the subsequent age in which that seed will have finally
yielded its golden fruit.

The creative energies released by the Law of Baha'u'llah, permeating and
evolving within the mind of 'Abdu'l-Baha, have, by their very impact and
close interaction, given birth to an Instrument which may be viewed as the
Charter of the New World Order which is at once the glory and the promise
of this most great Dispensation. The Will may thus be acclaimed as the
inevitable offspring resulting from that mystic intercourse between Him
Who communicated the generating influence of His divine Purpose and the
One Who was its vehicle and chosen recipient. Being the Child of the
Covenant--the Heir of both the Originator and the Interpreter of the Law of
God--the Will and Testament of 'Abdu'l-Baha can no more be divorced from
Him Who supplied the original and motivating impulse than from the One Who
ultimately conceived it. Baha'u'llah's inscrutable purpose, we must ever
bear in mind, has been so thoroughly infused into the conduct of
'Abdu'l-Baha, and their motives have been so closely wedded together, that
the mere attempt to dissociate the teachings of the former from any system
which the ideal Exemplar of those same teachings has established would
amount to a repudiation of one of the most sacred and basic truths of the
Faith.

The Administrative Order, which ever since 'Abdu'l-Baha's ascension has
evolved and is taking shape under our very eyes in no fewer than forty